It's weird, but if you have never had a CC balance, then I believe you have a more attractive score to lenders if you have actually just paid the minimums. That way it registers a loan being paid off instead of no loan at all.

That's not really accurate. Every month the CC company reports your balance to the CRA's. It doesn't matter if I pay the balance in full when the bill comes, the balance is still reported. The only way to show no balance on your CR is to pay the bill before your monthly statement is issued, thereby giving a zero balance on the statement.